I made my oldest daughter a little crochet sachet. The crochet heart is two sided with an 'E' sewn onto the front. Inside is a bath sized tea bag that I filled with both flax seed and lavender flowers. I sealed the tea bag before stuffing it into the heart so that the lavender and seeds wouldn't slip out between the little gaps in the crochet. The heart smells really good and can be used as a little pillow for calming thoughts or sleep or as a pomander for a closet or drawer.


The picture on the left is a reference for size because I'm holding it in the palm of my hand. The picture on the right is more accurate for color.

Well I finally made my first sale on Etsy. Although my shop lists 19 other people on Etsy labeling Feral Moon a favorite, I haven't had one nibble until a few days ago. On the same day I had one person asking a product question and one person asking if I'd consider doing a trade. Well nothing came of the product question but the trade went through.

Trades are a normal thing that occurs on Etsy. It's a professional courtesy and a way of marketing yourself and getting your name out there. People will often look at other shops and items and if they have something of a similar value to offer, they'll ask for a trade. It's up to the individual shop owners if they're open for trades or not. I decided to be open for now and see how it goes.

My trade was for one bar of soap. The person asked if they could either have a coffee or an oatmeal bar. I chose the oatmeal. In return, I'd get a homeschooling magazine that they self publish. I also threw in a hand crochet heart (since Valentine's Day is coming up) that I made myself.

Here are some handmade goods that I put together for Christmas this year. Some of them I actually gave as gifts. Others I was using as prototypes to make more of for next year. They all turned out wonderfully and I've discovered that I really like working with felt and beads.

1) hand sewn felt wolf ornament - a gift for my husband

2) hand sewn and beaded felt teacup and saucer ornament

3) hand sewn felt teapot ornament - a gift for Jackie and Dennis

4) hand sewn felt Emler fish ornament - a gift for my4 year old that takes swim lessons at Emler

5) hand sewn and beaded felt tea bag ornament - another gift for Jackie and Dennis

6) knitted mouse toy - a gift for my niece

7) hand sewn felt penguin ornament - a gift for my 6 year old that loves penguins

8) hand sewn felt mini poinsettia pincushion

9) hand sewn felt teacup ornament

A care package went out a few days ago to a friend of ours in the DC area. Between our friends, there are a few of us that do a lot of cooking and a few of us that need a detailed map just to find the kitchen. Our friend falls into the later category and is often left drooling when those of us in the former category get talking about food. So a while back I casually mentioned that at some point I'd send him something to nibble on. Between our busy schedule, the kids, and the fact that anything fresh out of the oven usually doesn't sit around long enough to box up and ship out, it took me a while to come up with something to send.

These are oatmeal, raisin, walnut cookies. I decided against sending anything with chocolate for several reasons. 1) The weather. Some days it's hot, other days it's not. 2) It's easier to get non chocolate related treats out of the house. Chocolate in any form around here is usually confiscated and devoured in record time. 3) I was looking for something that would hold up well in shipping. These cookies do just that. 4) Due to inflated postal rates (*shakes fist at the postal system*), it's only reasonable to send things so that they arrive in a few days, rather than overnight. Priority mail is said to take 2-3 days. I've never had anything arrive in less than five. I needed something that wouldn't melt, fall apart, get stale, or spontaneously combust by the time the postal carriers get around to actually delivering the mail.


I also sent a Pedigree bone for his pup to have his own nibbles.

And also, I sent this. This is Melvin and he sort of forced me to create him. I guess you could say that he inspired me to be inspired to put him together. And he's another reason why sending things out around here takes so long. Cookies (if I can get them out of the oven, cooled, and hidden away to send before anyone finds them) don't take very long. Projects usually take several days depending on the time available to me to work on them. By the time I get stuff out to work on, and set things up, the girls are usually screaming at each other, demanding things, needing my help, etc etc. And working on a project for half a minute at a time isn't really conducive to anything except getting frustrated. Melvin took about a week to make. If I could have worked on him consistently, he probably would have only taken a couple of hours.

Introducing Melvin.


When I showed Melvin to Eddie, he was a little lost for words. "What the hell is it!?!" I told him that Melvin was a 'moldy cupcake'. Okay, still lost for words. "Ummm..... whhhyyyyy????" Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Our friend is a bachelor, doesn't cook, eats just about everything...... Okay, so there's no real cohesive train of thought, but it SEEMED like a good idea at the time and he simply demanded to be made. And he was fun to make. And he's cute. Well *I* like him. And the girls did too. In fact, Melvin almost didn't make it into the box because the girls wanted to adopt him.


And since somebody in the house thought that if I was going to send such a 'thing', it needed a little further explanation as far as what 'it' was.


So he was sent with a little introductory note including care and feeding instructions. Yeah yeah yeah. I hope that at least somebody else appreciates him. Even moldy cupcakes need some love.

Something I whipped up a few days ago. It's a plant poke. Keeps the ivy cheerful, I guess.

In addition to a busy day, I also managed to finish up two crochet projects. Our 5-year old neighbor, Garrett, had asked me to make him a pig, which is his favorite animal. I also know that his favorite color is green. So I made a pig/warthog with a green mohawk. And I couldn't make him a toy without making one for Penelope (his little sister), so I made her a little 'bed bug' type toy. Something she can easily grip in one hand as she's two years old.

This evening, I finally finished up a project that I had been working on over the last couple of weeks. Since I made a little piggie for Teagan, Bronwyn has been wanting me to make her something. Since one of her favorite colors is purple and one of her favorite animals is elephants, I crocheted her a little purple elephant. I surprised her with it and she is thrilled. She wants to take him with her everywhere and she sleeps with him at night.

Here's Bronwyn and her new elephant.


And below, I've caught footage of the elephant and the pig, exploring their environment!


Here they are braving the brush and moving on to safer pastures.


Here's Bronwyn's elephant, foraging for wild berries, roots and tubers, and maybe the occasional dust bunny.


And here he is again, camoflaged in a wild red oak, getting ready to pounce on unsuspecting villagers.

We have a really close friend that lives in California that we pretty much talk to on a daily basis and we see and talk to him all the time in the online game that we all play. He's a really great guy and, believe it or not, we've not actually met face-to-face yet even though we've known him close to 10 years now. Anyway, every holiday is an ordeal for him for various reasons - his birthday, included. And since his birthday falls on Mother's Day this year, we decided to send him a little pick-me-up gift to let him know that we're thinking about him, hopefully without being too sappy about it. So we sent him some rum balls and a little crochet guy that I made. We're hoping it'll make him smile a bit.

This evening, I surprised Teagan with a little handmade crochet piggie.

I've been working on and off on a project over the past few months. I've only been able to work on it when Eddie's been at work and when the girls haven't been pestering me so that I can do more than a few minutes work at a time on it because otherwise, it's a complete waste of time and very confusing. Which means that I had been working more off than on. But I finally finished it and surprised Eddie with it this evening when he came home from work.

These are pictures of some more sneak peaks of projects that I have completed. I have two more currently in the works but I haven't taken pictures yet because they're unfinished.

This reminds me of the old Highlights magazines where they'd take little snippets of photos and ask the kids to figure out what the actual picture was of. I used to love those magazines when I was a kid.

Finally finished something else. The crop will have to be weeded out even more. I just don't have time to make everything I wanted to.

Here are some sneak peeks of things that I've been working on over the past months. Still have quite a few to do. I think I'm going to have to thin the craft herd though because I seriously doubt I'll have enough time to complete everything I have on my list.